


Safe Place

by Kittenatheart



Category: iZombie (TV)
Genre: Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-28
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-18 02:57:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17572964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kittenatheart/pseuds/Kittenatheart
Summary: When Silvia (OC) has nowhere to go, her old friend Ravi offers her a place to live for a while. However, she still has some even tougher issues she’s trying to work through, and she might need Ravi to save her from herself.





	Safe Place

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING
> 
> This piece has depictions of self-harm and may not be suitable for some readers.

I crept into the house, hoping Ravi and Major were not up and about. They always tried to ask me how the job-hunting was going, and today that was exactly the last thing I needed to hear. Apparently no one was looking for an over-qualified, former college professor as a substitute elementary school teacher... or anything else for that matter.  
The tv was on and I could see the shape of someone sitting in front of it, playing some sort of video game I hadn’t seen before. He obviously wasn’t going to bombard me with questions about the “hunt” tonight, which somehow made me feel worse for having nothing to offer him. I felt obligated to say something. After all, the two of them had already done so much for me.  
I inched closer and peeked around the couch to determine who it was. I wanted to curse when I realized it was Major. I had always known Ravi better. Well, he had seen me now; I couldn’t just back out of it.  
“Hey Major, I just wanted to say that I really do appreciate you and Ravi letting me crash here until I get back on my feet. You have no idea how much it means to me.”  
“Huh.” Major didn’t even turn to look at me, and it felt like ice in my heart. Maybe I was more of a burden than either of them let on.  
“I’m so sorry if I’m putting stress on you or making things hard. I really don’t mean to.”  
He nodded a little, still playing his game. “Yeah.”  
I don’t know why that set it off, but it did. I suddenly realized how intrusive I was being in their lives. They were so gracious about it, it was a wonder it took this long for one of them to show how they really felt. Feeling suddenly short of breath, I sprinted up to my room - no, Ravi’s room. He was just letting me use it. I even took his room from him! I hadn’t even told them when I was moving out again. They were stuck with me. No wonder they always asked how the searching went. They wanted me out of their house. They just wanted me out. Out of their lives.  
I started getting a familiar tingling feeling in the palms of my hands. I hadn’t felt it for a very long time, yet it was as natural as if I had just felt it yesterday.  
I wanted to hurt myself.  
The sheer stupidity of it made me want to scream. I had spent so long fighting the urges, and yet as soon as things went a bit wrong, they were back. It served me right though. I kind of deserved it, didn’t I? I was being such a burden on my closest friends.  
I couldn’t mess up one more thing and just give in. I had to restrain myself. I knew, I knew objectively that it was bad, that I shouldn’t do it. But really, what harm did it do? It was nothing serious, and I could always heal with nothing more than a couple little white lines...  
No. Stop. I was not doing this again.  
But the feeling was growing stronger the more I thought, the more I felt, and suddenly all the emotions inside me were just too much. I couldn’t. I couldn’t.  
I used the flat of my palm and struck the top of my head three times in quick succession. It barely hurt, but the relief was immediate - and intense. It was something else to focus on. I was okay. I was here. I breathed in deeply and focused on the phantom blows still ringing in my head to ignore all the feelings pressing up against my rib cage.  
It was working. My breathing slowed, and I suddenly realized my hands were curled into fists before slowly letting them unfurl.  
Soon enough, I began wondering why I was stopping myself when hurting myself was the only thing that brought me this kind of relief.  
No, this was not happening. I wasn’t seriously considering going back to that destructive tendency, was I? Maybe those blows to the head were well deserved after all.  
I tried to shake off the feelings but all the emotions were still there, just temporarily suppressed. I started getting that same itching of restlessness in my hands and up my arms and tried to combat it with tense fists but to no avail. That shaving razor sitting on my nightstand was looking really tempting. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t shiny or new or even very clean, for that matter. It was sharp enough. And I couldn’t bring myself to care that the blades were mostly covered by plastic to prevent this sort of accident. I didn’t need accident prevention, I needed relief from this overwhelming pressure in my brain immediately.  
Soon I found myself dragging the razor sideways across my thigh, pressing hard and pulling back to catch skin between the blades as I did. It didn’t even look like I was doing anything so I tried again, pressing harder and pulling more each time I did until I started to see blood and split skin.  
And then the pain started to kick in.  
Small, stinging pain like sharp needles poking into my skin. It started up at the top where I had not seen any cuts but now saw tons of tiny little red lines, grouped in threes. I relished in the sight. Nine swipes of the razor, twenty-seven little red tally marks, each one a little bigger than the last.  
“Oh no, Sil...”  
Ravi’s voice startled me and my head snapped up to find him in the doorway, staring at the carnage that was my thigh. He wouldn’t even meet my eyes; he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the blood, even as he rushed into the room and onto my bed.  
I was petrified with fear. There was no hiding this. He was looking right at it, knowing what I had done. He was touching me-  
I ripped my arm from his grasp and leaned away from him suddenly. He held up his hands as if to prove he was no threat. “Hey, Silvia, it’s okay. You are going to be okay. But please, give me that.”  
He pointed at the shaving razor in my hand. I looked at it. It was as if my brain was shutting down. There was no way to remedy this situation. There was no pause button. I couldn’t stop and think of what to say or do or how to respond, so I said nothing. I couldn’t go back and retry, hide the evidence before he came in. This was real. The razor began swimming as my eyes filled with tears and started spilling down my cheeks. I couldn’t look at him. I must have looked so stupid, cutting myself with a shaving razor rather than a real blade. We had plenty of real knives in the house. I looked so weak and pitiful.  
“Hey hey hey,” Ravi said, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “Sshhh. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry, I’m here. It’s alright.”  
He slowly pulled away as I attempted to snort back tears and suddenly there was a box of tissues by my knee and the weight in my hand was gone. I watched him carefully put the razor down on the covers a couple feet away from me, near the foot of the bed.  
“Look, Sil, I cant let you keep that, just so you know. And before I leave I’m going to take anything else that’s sharp in here. It’s just... precautions. I’m sorry. I just need to know that you won’t keep doing... that after I leave. It’s not safe.”  
“I’m sorry Ravi, but the more you talk the more appealing it looks.”  
I immediately shut myself up and looked down. There was a lot more blood now. I could see why he looked so scared.  
“I’m sorry, Sil.” I looked up at how weak his voice sounded. He looked so concerned. “I’ll shut up now.”  
In the silence that followed, he slowly stood and walked to the door with the razor in hand, glancing back at me with those big, sad, puppy dog eyes before leaving. It was as if somebody had given me permission to cry and the switch was flipped.  
I could barely breathe. My diaphragm was contracting and constricting, forcing all the air from my body. When I finally gasped in another breath, my own lungs crushed against my sternum and it felt as if my chest was going to explode from the pressure. My cheeks were slick with salt and dark spots sprinkled my lap and bed covers where the tears had fallen.  
Yet in mere moments he was back with something in his hand, and I tried to force myself to stop. I couldn’t let myself cry like this in front of him.  
He sat back down beside me and soothingly rubbed my back, whispering “Sshh, hey, it’s okay. It’ll be okay. This is going to hurt a bit but I’m going to clean you up, okay? Okay.”  
He opened up what I could now see was a medical kit and brought out some antiseptic swabs and bandages and a pair of blue medical gloves which he immediately put on. He carefully began wiping the blood from my thigh with the antiseptic. He was right; it stung worse than the cuts themselves. I didn’t care though. I deserved it for not hiding what I was doing in the first place. I knew that that kind of thinking was what had started me on this self-destructive path, but I couldn’t do anything about that. All those thoughts seemed so true.  
After cleaning the cuts, Ravi carefully lifted my leg and began wrapping it gently with bandages. Then he packed away all the supplies and disposed of the gloves without once meeting my eyes. When he was done, he settled against the headboard of my bed and awkwardly patted the bed beside him, inviting me to do the same. I did so reluctantly, and we sat in silence. After a bit, he wrapped one arm around my shoulders. I leaned into his comforting touch and he hugged me with his other arm as well. We sat there in comfortable silence for some time, just enjoying the feeling of not being alone.  
Maybe I was wrong. I had thought that hurting myself was the only thing that could bring me relief. But sitting here next to Ravi... I felt more okay than I had in such a long time. It had taken so much longer to achieve, but I had a feeling that unlike the relief from the cuts, this could last.  
I whispered, “Thank you, Ravi. Thank you for... everything. You have no idea how much I appreciate you.”  
“Well, I have a little bit of an idea,” he joked. His voice seemed to be working its way back to his normal humorous tone, which was comforting. He pulled away and placed his hands on my shoulders, looking me directly in the eyes. “Look, I know that it must be extremely hard for you, so I’m not going to make you promise to stop or anything like that. But please, promise me you will talk to me. I want to help you, but I can’t if I don’t know how you’re feeling.”  
I took a deep breath and stared into his pleading eyes. This was going to be hard. And embarrassing. And I was going to be extremely vulnerable. But I had to do it. For Ravi.  
And most importantly, for me.  
“Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Stay safe out there, guys. It’s important to find a safe place, and safe people, for when you are struggling.
> 
> You are important. And you are never a burden. Your friends want to help you, they just need you to let them know what they can do.


End file.
